In and Out the Rain

A Villanelle and a Sonnet

This week’s poems are all about the in-between moments as the monsoon rains move across the land.

First, a villanelle…

Waiting

Between the daylight and the storm-clouds’ burst,
While sky itself is white and sere and plain,
All things still wait the quenching of their thirst.

Clouds’ edges blow like billowed flags dispersed;
The winds go skirling like a war-refrain
Between the daylight and the storm-clouds’ burst.

The mountains stand black-browed in stone, as erst
They ever stood, yet even they would fain
Like all things find the quenching of their thirst.

Beneath the chollas rabbits wait the worst
Of wind and lightning, sheltered in the main
Between the daylight and the storm-clouds’ burst.

The yellow blooms of devil’s-claw were nursed
By desert sun, dry soil; and is it vain
They too still wait the quenching of their thirst?

It is the small things need the deluge first,
So eagerly they wait the coming rain;
Between the daylight and the storm-clouds’ burst
All things still wait the quenching of their thirst.

---

And now a sonnet…

The Rainbow

The sun is setting in the distant west,
And in his wake the final clouds drift white,
But to the east upon the mountains’ crest
The rain is falling on the verge of night;
The rain is falling on the edge of sight,
Is falling fine and faint, and clouds are gray
Where clouds fade into night. Yet from the height
Of heaven hangs one final kiss of day,
One last kiss from the sun where kisses play
Upon the dusk.  For where the droplets fade
A rainbow rises high, where the last ray
Just quivers, faintly pink, in rain-fall’s shade.
It glows rose-pink against day’s final wane;
It fades, rose-pink, amid the falling rain.

---